'Right to buy' to be scrapped in Scotland

grizzly1911

The right of council tenants to buy the homes they rent at discounted rates is to be abolished in Scotland.
Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is expected to confirm the government's decision to end the scheme on a visit to a housing association in Glasgow.
Margaret Thatcher's government introduced the scheme in 1980.
The Scottish government has already scrapped it for new tenants and is expected to announce that it will be abolished altogether in 2016.
Since "right to buy" was introduced, 455,000 Scottish properties have been sold under the scheme.
That has reduced the number of homes available for cheap rent and increased the waiting lists for properties of this type.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23155904
Too little too late. Meanwhile south of the border:-

This is in marked contrast to policy in England. In this year's budget, the UK government increased the discount available to tenants in London.
The Chancellor also promised to reduce the qualifying period from five to three years to widen access.

I_have_spoken

All part of creating the Socialist Republic of Scotland

ILW

Never seemed right selling off a taxpayer owned asset to a lucky chosen few with a massive discount.

Percy1983

It does bother me its at a discount, selling is fine but why so cheap.

I have the paperwork showing how much the previous owners bought our house using RTB, in short they bought it cheap 5 years before selling it and made a nice profit for doing nothing.

Graham_Devon

Wow, someones actually decided to scrap a thatcher policy instead of just moaning about it.

Good on them. Though with these lot, theres always a catch.

And here it is....

They won't scrap it now. Oh no....they will scrap it in 2017.. !!!!!! is the point?! This will just bring forward MORE sales.

Why can't any of the parties actually implement policy today - seemingly everything from al parties is held off until 2015,16,17.

You can't exactly suggest it's the wrong policy but stick with it for another 4 years. That's just called trying to win votes without actually having to implement anything.

Conrad

One of those issues I'm torn on but I think on balance I'd come down in favour of scrapping it. Far too many Londoners I've met that have made hundreds of thousands by being in right place at right time thus enabling them to leap frog others who worked and saved very much harder to get the same result.

ed110220

I have very mixed feelings. On the one hand I live in a house that was bought by the previous owners under RTB. On the other, all the people who used to live in social housing who could not buy (and their children etc) now have to rent privately, usually for much more than from the council and often subsidised by housing benefit, which is essentially a form of socialism for the rich as it goes straight into the pockets of landlords.

Percy1983

I have no problem with selling, but it should be something close to market value, more importantly the money should then be used to build more.

grizzly1911

Percy1983 wrote: »

I have no problem with selling, but it should be something close to market value, more importantly the money should then be used to build more.

The receipts were needed to keep the UK on life support for a few years more. We couldn't afford to plough it back into hard assets.

Conrad

Just listening to LBC 97.3 FM Radio.

Black guy called into say he got his council house just because he chose to leave home, and went on to buy it for £70k, now worth £350k.
Like winning the lottery.

Yet again rewarded for nothing! Welcome to Britain.

IveSeenTheLight

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Wow, someones actually decided to scrap a thatcher policy instead of just moaning about it.

Good on them. Though with these lot, theres always a catch.

And here it is....

They won't scrap it now. Oh no....they will scrap it in 2017.. !!!!!! is the point?! This will just bring forward MORE sales.

Why can't any of the parties actually implement policy today - seemingly everything from al parties is held off until 2015,16,17.

You can't exactly suggest it's the wrong policy but stick with it for another 4 years. That's just called trying to win votes without actually having to implement anything.

Once again Scotland leads the way

To answer you query through Graham, it takes time and essentially more, notification to make policy changes.

People are living longer, one of the impacts to this is pensions.
Therefore the government have been discussing and implementing a policy change to extend the retirement age.

Imagine if you were 64, with a birthday at the end of the month and the government announced today that the lower retirement age would from today be 70.
You'd be gutted wouldn't you.

going back to the RTB policy change, if the implemented straight away, they might open themselves up for litigation for discrimination by not allowing due notification and process.

Ok it means to ensure there is no discrimination that people have a few more years to take up the option, but from that point on, the foundations will be in place.